Cagney & Lacey reunited

Buddy movies and TV shows had always been the preserve of men – until New York cops Cagney and Lacey hit our screens in the 80s. Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly, still friends and both starring in the West End, reminisce about changing the face of primetime TV

Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless, who played Mary Beth Lacey and Christine Cagney in Cagney & Lacey. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

There was a period in her 20s when Tyne Daly was always cast as a victim. She had grown up in a theatrical family, dreamt of being a classical actor, as well as appearing on the musical stage, but her husband's acting and directing career led the couple to Hollywood with their baby daughter. "My time on television began, and I started playing victims," she says. "I did about 10 or 12 years of them, which gets old, right?" Her laughter echoes around the empty auditorium. A large, studded bird ring glints on her finger, and her eyes widen occasionally like a startled owl. She was once stopped at an airport by someone who recognised her from TV in that era. "You're the girl who cries ugly, right?" they said. She laughs raucously again at the memory. "Because I couldn't make one lovely tear come streaming down. So yeah. I cried ugly. Like most people do."

In the early 80s, a new project arose. The chance to play the hero. The story had been in development since the mid-70s, when producer Barney Rosenzweig first became aware of the burgeoning women's movement. After watching a film called Scent of a Woman (not the Al Pacino version) his then-girlfriend, Barbara Corday, declared it, "the most degrading, the most sexist film I have ever seen". Rosenzweig began watching from a new perspective. He imagined all the women were male Hasidic Jews. "By making this transference," he has written, "I 'saw' the sexist humour for what it was, something that only worked at the expense of someone less powerful … It was a revelation."

He went on to read From Reverence to Rape, a book by feminist film critic Molly Haskell, and was struck by the idea that there had never been a true female buddy movie, either on the big screen or television. Rosenzweig decided to make one, a story combining action with female solidarity. Newman and Redford was discussed as a title, but discarded as a legal risk. Cross My Bra and Hope to Die was unfortunate for other reasons. Fair Game was mooted. Finally it became Cagney & Lacey.

Thirty years after the show began, its two stars, Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless, appeared together again, for an anniversary event at the British Film Institute. The tickets sold out almost immediately. I was struck by the crowd's responses, the impromptu standing ovations as the women took the stage, the belly laughs as they described some clunky episodes – their characters, both cops, once had to go "undercover" dressed as a pineapple and a tomato. Then there were swallowed sobs, as the more dramatic clips played, including one in which Daly's character, Mary Beth Lacey, struggles to accept a breast cancer diagnosis, and another in which Gless's character, Christine Cagney, descends into alcoholism.

p>The first script was developed by Corday and her writing partner,
Barbara Avedon, the pair creating what Corday described as, "a show about two women who happen to be cops, not two cops who happen to be women". There was a TV movie in 1981, followed by a TV series, which ran from 1982 to 1988; the characters would
race around New York City, running up stairs, down stairs, arresting perps, rolling their eyes at flashers, wielding guns when absolutely necessary. And there was that undertow of solidarity. The women would argue, and laugh, and talk regularly in the ladies – or as they called it, "the jane". They could disagree vociferously, while always, at base, being deeply supportive. The show was a love story, as much as any buddy movie. "I want my partner back," said Lacey, when Cagney was gripped by alcoholism. "I love you, and I don't want to lose you."

The show was groundbreaking in its politics; watching it now on DVD, it's hard to believe anything so nakedly feminist ever appeared on primetime TV. The characters reunited for four films in the mid-90s, and New York magazine TV critic John Leonard wrote that the show had been, "to primetime what The Golden Notebook had been to modern novels and modern marriage: street-smart feminism; politics and friendship; therapy on the barricades; brains on a rampage … Without Chris and Mary Beth, Thelma and Louise would not have been imaginable."

In their 60s now, the women have the easy rapport of people who once worked 17-hour days together, with all of the pressure that implies, but came through as great friends. They have both seen a lot. Daly has been through divorce; Gless has been through alcoholism herself, as well as an incident in which an obsessive fan broke into her house with a semi-automatic rifle, leading to a seven-hour stand-off with the police. (thankfully Gless wasn't in the house at the time.) As we speak, the two women often nudge each other, falling into fits of salty laughter. In his memoir Cagney & Lacey … And Me, Rosenzweig, who married Gless in 1991, writes that she "has a mouth on her that men in a naval transportation unit might envy", while Daly "can be a pure diva of operatic proportions".

The last description seems prescient. Daly is due to appear as Maria Callas in the play Master Class, a role that won her superlativereviews on Broadway, and is transferring to the Vaudeville in London's West End in January. She has built a stellar theatre career since Cagney & Lacey ended, playing everyone from Mama Rose in Gypsy to Clytemnestra in Agamemnon; the New York Times's chief theatre critic, Ben Brantley, declared her "one of the finest American actresses working".

Then there's Gless's play, A Round-Heeled Woman, which has just transferred from the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, to the Aldwych. She plays Jane Juska, who placed an advertisement in the New York Review of Books, reading: "Before I turn 67 next March, I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like." The role starts with the character masturbating and moves through various sex scenes, while also exploring Juska's difficult relationship with her son. Gless is terrific. When I ask how she came to buy the rights to Juska's memoir, she tells me she was dared to by her husband. "We'd had a huge fight, and about an hour later, he came in with this New York Times article, threw it on my desk and said: 'If you had any balls, you'd go after that.' So I read it, and I was so fascinated by her, and so pissed at him, that I called my lawyer the next morning and said: 'Get it for me!'"

<

Tyne Daly as Mary Beth Lacey and Sharon Gless as Chris Cagney in 1987. Photograph: Cbs Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images
p>Is it harder to find good roles as they get older? "Yes," says Gless. "I have been very blessed, as has Tyne … but generally, ageism is rampant in Hollywood. Not against men."

"Yes against men," Daly corrects her. "Not actors, but in terms of the people who run the place, the producers."

Hollywood is also legendarily sexist, but Cagney & Lacey upended stereotypes. Their characters were tough, flawed and complementary. Lacey was the working-class woman from Queens, with two, then three kids, very much in love with her swooningly supportive husband, determined to do a good job, but with no interest in greasing her way up the ranks. Cagney was born to money on her mother's side, with a father who had been a cop, and she was cool, tough, ambitious, single and highly sexual, determined to be part of the boys' club. The show explored rape, abortion and unintended pregnancy, its outlook being cast, early on, when Rosenzweig told the network he would not make the show unless the women were allowed to make a menstruation joke.

There are almost certainly more women on TV now than there were then, but in some ways the series still seems the high watermark of feminism on screen. While both actors were attractive – Gless the cool blonde, Daly with her strong, serious mien – they also looked like ordinary women. "Tyne was so into detail," says Gless, "that the hairdressers would say, 'wait, I need to do the back of your hair,' and she'd say: 'Mary Beth can't see the back of her head, so I don't care." Daly fought to ensure her character, who was living on a budget, didn't have a new outfit each week, so the cowl-necked jumpers were regularly recycled. One incident nonetheless rankles. When the series ended there was a break-in at the costume warehouse, and "All of Christine Cagney's clothes were stolen," says Daly, "and none of Mary Beth Lacey's clothes were! I was so insulted."

The men who played the other cops, "weren't used to coming in one day a week, says Daly, "and doing a little tip-tap and then the girls take over. We, of course, were trained in that. You would politely step aside, while the main people, the interesting people – the men – [were centre stage]. What I didn't know was how much hunger there was in the audience to see themselves on television. Black people like to see themselves on television. Women like it. Hispanic people like it. When we started reflecting the lives of women, there was a swell of support."

Gless says Rosenzweig once pointed out that, "before Cagney & Lacey, women and minorities were always just considered amusing".

"Women were marginalised in the comedy ghetto," says Daly, "where, no matter what's going on with your life, we'll fix it in 26 minutes. The powers that be were reluctant to hand over that expensive hour, which sells a lot of advertising space, to two stars with vaginas." Such was its success, they received letters from women who were joining the police force because of them. "You'd want to write to them and say, 'are you crazy?'" says Gless.

"I did write to them and say: reconsider," says Daly. "This is make-believe and the real job is something quite different. But again, the doors were opening to non-traditional jobs. We were at that transitional fulcrum, and we were showing it on TV, which is a very, very powerful medium."

The show had several false starts before it became a hit. Gless was always the first choice for Cagney, but when Rosenzweig was casting the initial TV movie, she was under contract to Universal Studios, and was unavailable. She had grown up in California, the granddaughter of Neil McCarthy – attorney to Howard Hughes and Cecil B DeMille – and decided to become an actor, aged six. The ambition was set aside until an acting workshop in her mid-20s, which led to the contract with Universal. She was the studio's last ever contract player. "I loved it," she says. "You got $186 a week, whether you worked or not."

The role went instead to Loretta Swit, from the show M*A*S*H. The TV movie was an enormous success, and Rosenzweig was asked to create a series. Swit wasn't available, Gless was still under contract, and so he cast Meg Foster as Cagney. Within six episodes, she was ousted by the network; an unnamed CBS executive told TV Guide the pair were: "too harshly women's lib. The American public doesn't respond to the bra burners, the fighters, the women who insist on calling manhole covers 'people-hole covers'. These women on Cagney & Lacey seemed more intent on fighting the system than doing police work. We perceived them as dykes."

p>Rosenzweig was given an order for more episodes, providing he re-cast Cagney, and he was finally able to secure Gless. (Ironically, given that executive's comment, Gless brought
an enthusiastic lesbian audience to the show.)

"I so wanted to impress Tyne," says Gless, "that the first scene we did together was terribly overacted. I wanted things to run out of my nose while I was crying. I'd seen Jane Fonda do it in Klute, and I thought, well, if I can do that, Tyne will really think I'm hot, right?"

The show aired to low ratings, and its cancellation was announced during its run. Hundreds of letters poured in from devastated fans, and Rosenzweig put together a form response advising each of them to write to their local newspaper, plus the New York Times and LA Times. Both major newspapers soon ran articles about the deluge of post, the show continued to climb the ratings, reached number one, and was recommissioned. It went on to be nominated for 36 Emmys, and, for each of the six years it ran, either Daly or Gless won the outstanding lead actress in a drama award. The feminist writer Gloria Steinem called it "the best show on television".

Were either of them involved with the women's movement prior to the programme? "You couldn't not be if you had a brain cell working," says Daly. "And you could be involved against it too. There were those women who said: 'This is unseemly, go back and stay in your place, that's safest. Go to college to find the alpha male and marry him.' Those were very powerful political times, so for me, it was an unavoidable discussion." A mother-in-law joke once appeared in a script. Daly refused to perform it.

Had either of them experienced sexism in their careers? "How do you describe sexism?" laughs Gless. I mention the casting couch.

"It's not about the casting couch. It's about the money," says Daly firmly. They might have been among the highest paid women on television, but they were making, "one third of what was being made by the men at that time," she says. "This is an economic question. That's where they keep us distracted. They keep talking about sex itself, and having control over your own body, in terms of whether or not you're going to reproduce. And that is the distracting thing. What the women's movement is really about, like any other freedom movement, is equal treatment under the law, which means the same pay cheque if you're doing the same job, which means the same opportunities in the workplace. I'm going to sound real serious now. But it's handy for the powers-that-be to distract us with emotional issues when we're really talking about practical issues. Still is."

We talk a little about Maria Callas and, playing devil's advocate, I ask if either of them has ever behaved in a diva-ish manner.

"Ha," says Daly. "Probably. Sure. I mean, diva used to be a word that had importance. It meant you had accomplishments, you had temperament, it was based on some kind of talent. Diva is a word that's gotten cheapened – now it just means someone who's unpleasant and rude … You don't see them telling any of the boys they're divas because they'll only have green M&Ms in their dressing room. It's become another way to punish women. I've probably had fits. But just arbitrarily throwing your weight around? No."

"No," Gless agrees. "And the few fits I've had have been worthy ones." She leans in to my dictaphone, "just for the record, I was right."

"Atta girl!" says Daly, and they both wheeze with laughter.

Sharon Gless stars in A Round Heeled Woman at the Aldwych theatre, London until 14 January 2012. Tyne Daly stars in Master Class at the Vaudeville theatre from 21 January to 28 April 2012 Guardian Extra members can get a top price ticket to A Round Heeled Woman for £35. Find out more.